


Memores acti, prudentes futuri

by Donna_Immaculata



Category: DUMAS Alexandre - Works, Les Trois Mousquetaires | The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas, d'Artagnan Romances (Three Musketeers Series) - All Media Types
Genre: Canon - Book, Cunnilingus, Friends to Lovers, Multi, Oral Sex, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Threesome, Threesome - F/M/M, Twenty Years After, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-02
Updated: 2015-05-02
Packaged: 2018-03-26 19:19:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3861658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Donna_Immaculata/pseuds/Donna_Immaculata
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"You have no reason to envy him on that score, for I owe to you the pleasure of knowing him," replied the witty woman, with a smile which recalled Marie Michon to Aramis and to Athos.</i> (Twenty Years After)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memores acti, prudentes futuri

**Author's Note:**

> Set a short time after 20YA. Because Aramis/Athos/Marie are an OT3 if ever I saw one.
> 
> Also, an attempt to explore the nature of and approach to same-sex acts and desires in the 17th century.

On that balmy spring evening, the concierge at the hotel in the rue Saint Dominique was under orders to send away any visitors who wished to pay Marie de Rohan, the Duchesse de Chevreuse, a visit before her projected departure for a sojourn in the country. The duchesse herself had retired to her little boudoir, hung with blue damask, adorned by red flowers, with a foliage of gold. Reclining on a récamière, she entertained a party of two: the Comte de la Fère and the Chevalier d’Herblay. Both men had arrived in Paris that morning, and both had directly gone to pay their respects to their mutual friend, Marie Michon, where their accidental meeting caused the lady great mirth and put her in an excellent mood.

“How is Normandy this time of year?” the duchesse asked Aramis, who was seated on the foot of her récamière, leaning back on his elbow and all but sprawled in the cushions. His hand, white and elegant as ever, was toying with the plumes of her ostrich-feather fan that she had carelessly dropped.

“Much colder and far less hospitable than Paris, I assure you, Madame,” Aramis said with a smile that matched Marie’s own.

The woman laughed and turned to Athos, whose dark eyes and sardonic mouth indicated clearly what he thought of their tête-à-tête-à-tête. 

“And yet,” Marie said, “the chevalier encouraged his good friend Madame de Longueville to leave Paris and travel north. With an infant at her breast, no less! Don’t you think it irresponsible, Monsieur?”

“More irresponsible than sending the Vicomte de Bragelonne into war-ravaged Flanders?” Aramis said, in a low voice that vibrated with laughter. Athos raised his eyes to his friend’s face and lifted a corner of his mouth in a not-quite-smile.

Marie picked her fan from Aramis’ unresisting hand and began to fan herself languidly, as if to hide her amusement. She could not conceal the sparkle of her eyes, however, which flicked from Athos to Aramis and back again. 

“Did you have any news from the vicomte lately, Monsieur le comte?” Aramis asked with such perfect and neutral politeness as to elicit a broad smile from Athos, which the latter was unable to suppress. 

“About ten days ago,” Athos said, matching Aramis’ polite tone note for note. “I was hoping Madame la duchesse may perhaps have received a letter since.”

“The vicomte is most fortunate to have a patroness in you, Madame,” Aramis said. “Monsieur le comte did well to ask you for that favour.”

“Not as fortunate as Madame de Longueville’s son, who has the king himself for a godfather,” Marie said and trailed the tips of her fan’s feathers over the back of Aramis’ hand.

“Yes, it was a most fortunate idea indeed,” Athos said. “It came to me – I don’t quite recall how – as I remembered that young men used to gain great benefit from Madame la duchesse’s patronage and tutelage in the past.”

The gauntlet was dropped, and silence rang in the boudoir for a heartbeat or two. It shattered under Marie’s silvery laugh. “Oh, mon Dieu!” she gasped. “My dear comte, how is it possible that we’d waited so long to get acquainted? I declare your wit is more amusing even than that of Monsieur de Voiture. I can’t wait for my visit in Bragelonne to commence, where I’m sure I will get the full benefit of your tongue.”

Aramis sat up. “In Bragelonne?” he said. “You are most fortunate, Madame, to receive an invitation. I don’t know of any other lady to have been granted that honour.”

“I must admit,” said Marie, “I invited myself.”

Aramis burst out laughing. “Not for the first time, I dare say,” he said, with almost childlike glee, and locked his eyes with Athos’ across the room. The Comte de la Fère, comme-il-faut as always, replied merely by raising his eyebrows and holding Aramis’ gaze calmly. 

“In that case,” Aramis said, rose to his feet with catlike grace and strode towards Athos, “I think the comte and I should swap places.” He reached out and Athos placed his hand in Aramis’. For one breathless moment, both men stood face to face, chest to chest, and then Athos smiled and squeezed Aramis’ hand. He turned on his heel, walked to the récamière and lowered himself onto it. His hand brushed against the fabric of Marie’s petticoats and then his arm against her hand that lay across the backrest, as he settled into the cushions.

“Will the vicomte be at Bragelonne as well?” Aramis asked, and there suddenly was a melancholy air to his aspect. Or perhaps he merely looked different from that angle, his face illumed by candlelight and his features thrown into sharp relief by shadows. 

“No,” Athos said, his voice as serious as Aramis’ eyes.

“Monsieur le comte claims he remembers the history of Oedipus well,” Marie said, and there was challenge in her voice. It appeared as if, by swapping places, Aramis and Athos had turned the mood upside down. All playfulness was gone and what was left rendered the air in the chamber smoky and thick. 

“Does he,” Aramis said softly. 

“It is,” Athos said in a voice that was as smoky and thick as the air around them, “if you remember, a tragedy.”

“Only because,” Marie said, “the people involved in the tragedy had been left in the dark about the facts.”

“Are you saying, Madame, that the vicomte should be told?” Athos said.

“It is not my decision to make,” Marie answered; she, too, serious for once. “He is your ward, comte.” Turning towards Athos, she leaned her head gracefully on her hand. “And he could not wish for a better guardian,” she said, and then smiled her brilliant smile. “This is the very opposite of a Greek tragedy.”

“A Greek comedy, then?” Aramis smiled. He, too, rested his head on his hand, mirroring Marie’s gesture, and was watching the couple on the récamière with eyes that betrayed nothing.

Athos smirked. “Which one of us do you wish to relegate to the role of the Greek chorus, Madame?”

Marie threw her head back and laughed. “You must admit that there is a comedic element to it, René,” she said, turning back to Aramis, and both men startled at the sound of Aramis’ Christian name.

“Oh, I am aware of it,” Aramis said and looked from Marie to Athos. “The comte will tell you how his anguished confession made me laugh, when he finally summoned up the courage to make it.”

“I wonder how much he told you…” Marie said pensively, moving her fan in front of her face in a long, sweeping gesture. 

“Do you really?” Aramis whispered and the timbre of his voice was such that pins and needles erupted at the base of Athos’ spine and trickled all the way up to the back of his skull. Just like that, he suddenly understood – nay, viscerally felt the power Aramis had over the fair sex. He had always known Aramis to be beautiful, but it was not his appearance alone that drew women to him, from maid to duchess. There was a daimonic grace about him, one that Athos had always sensed and appreciated, afflicted by a similar darkness of the soul as he was; a fire that had immolated countless sinners.

Athos shifted in his seat, sunk his hand into the folds of Marie’s dress, wrapped a handful of silk around his fingers and lifted it slightly. “I believe I did tell you,” he said, watching Aramis closely, “that Madame la duchesse was dressed as a cavalier.”

“Did you, Monsieur?” Marie said, turning to Athos, twisting her entire body so that she came to rest against Athos’ shoulder. “Did you also tell him,” she asked, speaking directly in his face, “that it was _his_ clothes that I wore?”

Aramis bared his teeth at them – to call it a smile would have been blasphemy – and suddenly he was there, at Marie’s feet, kneeling before her. His position was that of a supplicant, but his posture was that of insolence. “The shirt you have stolen from me, my beloved cousin,” he said, sliding his open palms over the silk of her dress, from the hem all the way up to her thighs. “I remember it well.”

“Not stolen.” Marie shifted and flexed her legs, forcing Aramis to change his position to accommodate her. “Kept as a memento, my dear chevalier, just like you kept countless mementos of me.”

Athos bit down on a grin and turned his head so that his lips brushed her hair. 

“It fell all the way to your knees,” Aramis continued, unabashed. “Leaving this,” he began to hitch up her petticoats and dragged his finger from her ankle to her garter, “exposed,” he breathed.

Athos, who was watching him over Marie’s shoulder, rolled his hips and slid sideways in the seat until Marie, rather than resting against the back of the récamière, came to rest against his chest. Marie lifted her fan and brushed its feathers over Athos’ face, and he breathed in deeply, immersing himself deeper and deeper in the expensive scent that hung around her as if around an autumn rose. He seized her hand, motioned her to drop her fan into her lap, and then turned her hand around and pressed his parted lips to the inside of her wrist. The pulse of her blood was fast and strong, but he knew that already, because he could feel the beat of her heart where she was pressed up against him. Aramis must be feeling that same pulse as it throbbed through her legs, and Athos twisted his neck to see where Aramis’ hand was.

Aramis caught his eye and lowered his head. His mouth alighted on the patch of skin just above Marie’s garter. Marie sighed and rolled her head back, nestling it into the crook of Athos’ neck, pressing her face into his dark hair that spilled in elegant waves over his shoulders. “I should have known you were no curate, comte,” she whispered against his skin. Her slim hand travelled up his chest and throat, skipped over the ridge of his jaw, and she tangled her fingers in his hair. She lifted a tendril to her lips and kissed it. “No priest has hair like that.” She flexed and arched off the récamière, raising herself into Athos’ lap. “No priest but one,” she added with a look and a smile that smashed down the wall behind which forgotten memories lay buried in Aramis’ mind and brought them tumbling back, cascading like an avalanche to the forefront of his consciousness until he groaned under the onslaught.

At the sight of Aramis’ faltering, collapsing with his face into her lap, Athos gasped and instantly buried the sound between Marie’s burning lips. It was too much, to see his friend so overcome; to feel his dark passion unfurl its wings like a dragon: potent and all-consuming, but like a cavalry horse never out of control.

Trapped between Aramis’ mouth and Athos’, Marie tipped her head back so that her throat lay bare before Athos’ teeth and stretched and tightened her legs to pull Aramis in against the heat of her body. Athos bit down on the white shoulder, hard enough to leave a mark, and she groaned. “I never forgot your mouth on me, comte,” she whispered throatily in his ear. “You have imprinted yourself on my memory in more ways than one.”

It was not, as Athos knew, the truth. Sixteen years had passed since their fleeting and – in his case – drunken encounter. Yet her words sent a thrill through him that surged from his heart all the way down to his loins and erupted in his prick, which was pressing hard and insistent against Marie. 

“Ditto, Madame,” he said through breathless kisses to her shoulder, neck and lips. He slid down in his seat with her in his arms until they both ended up recumbent in the cushions, her legs spread over his thighs. And Aramis, Aramis, kneeling between them, watching them both with eyes that burned on Athos’ skin and on Marie’s like embers.

Marie wrapped her fingers around Athos’ wrist and motioned his hand to her breast. She moaned, in shameless, wanton abandon, when his palm singed her through the layers of fabric. Athos’ other hand was on her thigh, and he was hitching up her petticoats, higher and higher, baring her for Aramis. And, at last, Aramis moved. He struck like a serpent, darted between her legs without hesitation or warning, and he lapped at her cunt with the flat of his tongue. 

“Yes,” Marie said. “Go on, René.” And she clutched a handful of his hair.

Aramis laughed soundlessly, parting his lips over her flesh to let her feel his teeth. “Nothing has changed, I see,” he said and licked her again, more slowly, more deeply than before. Marie wriggled in a distinctly unladylike manner in Athos’ lap, slipping between his thighs, and Athos grabbed her leg, hooked his arm under her knee and pulled her back up, spreading her legs wide apart. He could feel the beat of her blood under his fingers where they dug into soft flesh, just as she could feel his under her loins. 

“You heard the lady, chevalier,” he said. “Go on.”

Marie gasped out another breathless laugh which Athos caught in his mouth just as it was turning into a moan. Between her legs, Aramis’ tongue was making obscene noises which Marie translated into deep, throaty moans and which, in turn, reverberated against Athos' lips. The air around them was humid with her arousal, and then Aramis lifted his head, looked Athos straight in the eye, and wiped his glistening mouth with the back of his hand. Marie raised herself on her elbows.

“Don’t stop,” she said. Flushed and gasping as she was, her artful coiffure dishevelled and her petticoats rumpled around her waist, she was more commanding than ever. Aramis stared at her, panting, on his knees, the top buttons of his doublet undone, his throat exposed, the picture of subservience. 

“How do you want me?” Aramis asked. He shifted his weight and, as he reached out to brace himself, his hand landed on Athos’ thigh, halfway between knee and hip, and he dug his fingers in deeply into the firm muscle that flexed under his grip. “Command me, and I will obey.”

Marie arched her back. “You take your vows of obedience seriously, chevalier, I know,” she said. Her white hand fluttered to that of Athos, which was supporting her leg, and she stroked his delicate fingers with her fingertips. 

Athos let go of her leg and trailed his hand up her thigh, towards the source of the heat that scorched his skin, and cupped her. “You should command him to lick you dry, Madame,” he said, with his mouth by her ear and his eyes on Aramis. 

Marie laughed. “I’m afraid that would be quite the Sisyphean task.”

“But a most enjoyable one,” Aramis said, pressing a hand to his heart. He appeared to have caught second wind and regained his wits, for his wide-eyed unfocused expression morphed into one of impish sauciness. His eyes were fixed firmly on Marie’s face as he delved back under her petticoats. In the last moment, his gaze shifted and locked with Athos’, and Aramis opened his mouth and thrust his tongue between Athos’ fingers to lick at Marie’s sex.

Athos clenched his jaw and shoved his knuckles against Aramis’ teeth. “You filthy reprobate,” he hissed and was rewarded by a huff of hot air as Aramis laughed into the back of his hand.

“You’re the one to talk, Monsieur le comte.” Aramis seized Athos’ wrist and held his hand in place as he continued to lick over and between his fingers, dipping his tongue into the moisture that was dripping from Marie’s cunt. “I believe it is you who requires a tongue bath, am I right?”

“Are you proposing to give me one?” Athos said, in a voice rather more breathless and jagged than he would have wished for. For a man who was kneeling before him and kissing his hand, Aramis was immoderately debonair. 

Another warm puff of air, cooling abruptly on his damp skin, and then Aramis’ voice, sultry like the devil’s own purr: “We can discuss the matter of your cleanliness another time, comte. At present, the lady’s pleasure is a greater concern of mine than your personal hygiene.”

“Oh, do not restrain yourselves on my account,” Marie interjected. Sprawled atop Athos like a cat in the sun, she was swaying her hips up and down, rubbing herself against the heel of Athos’ palm and against Aramis’ face. Aramis smiled and brushed his cheek against the inside of her thigh.

“I assure you,” Marie continued, luxuriating under the touch of Athos’ other hand, which was roaming up and down her body, “I do know how to get my pleasure.”

“That much is obvious,” Athos said. His roving hand halted in its explorations, and he cupped her face, tilted it towards his and kissed her, deeply, tasting her arousal on her tongue and lips.

“I’ve always thought that was one of my more attractive traits,” she said once they’d parted after the kiss, with a smile that was entirely that of Marie Michon.

“Madame, I can’t think of any traits of yours that aren’t attractive,” Aramis said.

Marie laughed again, but this time the silver of her laugh was underpinned by a dark melancholy note. “Oh, René,” she muttered, almost to herself. “You were most beloved, you know that, don’t you?”

Again, there was a change in the air around them, which grew dusky and more humid than before, ensconcing the three of them in a misty veil. Athos turned his head away from Marie’s, suddenly overwhelmed by the fragrance of her skin and hair. Even though her body was slim and lithe like that of a young woman, it was suddenly a heavy weight under which his arousal was painfully trapped. His hips jolted up as his body made its desire known to bury itself in a woman’s heat.

“I know.” It was barely more than a breath, a whisper like the wings of a moth against the inside of Marie’s thigh, and yet it sent a powerful shiver up her entire body, exploding in her chest and pressing the air out of her lungs in a desperate groan. Aramis dragged Athos’ hand upwards and licked Marie again. “Here,” he whispered inbetween long laps of his tongue. “This is the spot, Athos. Push your fingers down here and rub…” Marie groaned again and her hips jerked up. “Yes, like that,” Aramis continued and sucked in the whole of Marie’s sex with one voracious open-mouthed kiss.

~*~

They did not look at each other, Aramis and Athos, as they walked down the stairs side by side, both properly attired and presentable, their doublets buttoned, their hats pulled deep over their eyes to hide the flush that lingered in both their faces. Underneath their fine clothes, their bodies were thrumming with the restless energy of unspent desire. They could still feel Marie’s climax under their hands and lips, its aftershocks resonated through their nerves and made the blood sing under their skin, as if on the brink of battle.

“You are returning to Noisy-le-Sec tomorrow then?” Athos said once their reached their horses and time to say farewell had come.

Aramis acknowledged the question with a non-committal nod. “And you are taking the duchesse to Bragelonne with you?” He smiled, but faintly, and met Athos’ eyes at last.

“Aramis.” Athos took a step towards his friend, pressing down on the leaden heat that had suddenly burst in his chest and stomach and threatened to choke him. The playful, joyful debauchery appeared eons away, nothing but a mirage that was crumbling to dust when he attempted to hang on to the sensation. He should have known, Athos thought, that was not for him. He was not one of the courtiers for whom such dissipations were but an idle pastime. He prided himself on the fact that no woman would make his blood rise and that he was immune to the call of the flesh. What devilry was it that had possessed him to do that, with his most beloved friend and that friend’s old lover? And the mother of my son, he thought darkly. 

He realised that he was stood a few hair’s breadths away from Aramis, who was regarding him with dark, serious eyes. Aramis’ mouth was wet and swollen and Athos wanted to look away and couldn’t stop staring at it.

“What?” Aramis breathed.

The air between them hung heavy with memories. Not memories of the woman they’d left upstairs in a state of elation: she was not a memory yet, but the present. Her scent hung about both of them, their lips and tongues were coated in her taste, and their skin still bore the scorch marks left by her fingers. No, the memories were darker and deeper: warmth shared by sleeping skin on skin on countless nights of campaign, hands entangled under bedsheets to ward off the daimons of solitude and despair when death walked among them, fingers brushing against temple and brow and lips pressed upon lips to soothe and reaffirm: ‘you’re alive, I’m here’. They knew each other’s bodies as intimately as they knew any woman’s, but never before had they mapped the other’s body out for pleasure. The desire that drove them into each other’s arms had never been that of androphilia, not the animal lust of a sodomite to fuck and spend oneself in another man’s body. It was the desire to have and to hold, to sleep in the secure knowledge that the man next to one was living, breathing, entrusting himself in one’s hands at his most vulnerable, and drawing comfort and peace of mind from the closeness of the other. And if one did spend oneself, in a hand that was perhaps not one’s own, it was a breathless moment in which the world around them stood still; more intense in its clandestine noiselessness than any gaudy romp in a candlelit boudoir.

They could not part without an embrace. And yet, the memories that hung between them solidified more and more into something that would become impenetrable if neither of them moved soon. It was the awareness that, the moment he would take off his glove later in his rooms, he would probe his hand with his tongue to search for traces of Aramis which kept Athos away from his friend. His palm was soaked in the taste of Marie Michon, the memory of her would be easy to retrieve. But Aramis, Aramis was there, too, and he was more elusive than Marie, even though he was just as close. Closer even, for Aramis had been his friend those twenty years and Aramis would be there long after Marie’s departure from Bragelonne.

“Will we see each other again?” Athos said, very quietly.

“I think so,” Aramis said, equally quietly. “We always do.”

Athos stood still, willing his heart to resume beating in its habitual place in his chest, rather than in his throat.

“Do you wish it?” Aramis said in a voice that was barely more than a wisp of air.

“I wish it.” 

“Your hand, then, Athos,” Aramis said, reaching out. “For I know it is the most loyal hand in the world, and by clasping mine you make me a promise that your mouth won’t give.”

Athos felt Aramis’ thumb pass over the knuckles of his hand, and his skin tingled back to life under the kid-leather glove the way it had done under Aramis’ tongue. They both moved, then, and Athos' arm was around Aramis’ neck, Aramis’ hand splayed on his back, as they were sinking into an embrace that was both familiar and new, comforting and unsettling at once. Athos closed his eyes as he pressed his face into the crook of Aramis’ neck, and he knew Aramis did the same. They stood entwined for a few heartbeats, and then Aramis stirred and Athos pulled back from the heat that had arisen in the circle of Aramis’ arms. When they were face to face again, Aramis’ eyes were half-closed and he appeared not to breathe. He was still holding Athos’ hand in his, two fingers hooked under the cuff of the glove.

Athos pulled back, peeling the soft leather off his skin and leaving it in Aramis’ hand.

“Take this in lieu of the promise,” Athos whispered, “that you claim my mouth won’t give.”


End file.
